POPMS
Saturday, March 20, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 1343.
Douglas Copeland 1991 book Generation X spawned the tag for a generation borned between 1961 to 1981. Me, a 1981 baby, I belong to the last of the Generation X-ers (Some find the term derogatory, me, I don't mind).
I'm old enough to once have had a proper cassette collection, before the CD came and rendered those tapes - fast gathering mould due to lack of use - obsolete and relegated to the back of a dusty book shelf.
I hope my CD collection will never meet the same fate.
But yet, am I not someone who download MP3s regularly? The MP3 collection on my laptop numbers over 500, and I'm still downloading songs regularly. Then, there are the MP3s on my desktop back in Singapore which I did not copy over to this laptop on which I now type.
I don't quite know how big Australians are on Mp3s but in Singapore, kids in primary school are downloading not just Mp3s, but videos, games and instant-messaging services like ICQ and Msn Messager. They play online LAN games, competing with fellow surfers in some virtual land.
To that generation, downloading Mp3s are as natural as play and affinity for junk food.
Yeah, for them who are growing up in the cyberspace playground, I doubt they feel respect or any thing in particular for the Compact Disc, and of course, no nostagia either since there is no need or space for nostagia... as yet.
At the pace at which the world is embracing modernisation (characterised of course by technological developments and adoptation), the dearth of the CD seems inevitable. When the day comes, the CD will still hold a place in the hearts of us dinosaurs, in the way the vinyl is held dearly to by those who grew up many many moons ago.
When I talk about "the CD", I refer to CD albums, records with proper cover art and sleeves. Of course, many of us have a habit of burning our MP3s onto CDRs but I'm not referring to this.
As MP3 players gain popularity, there won't even be a need to use the CDR to carry MP3s. Corporate bigwigs are recognising this. Mobile phones and PDAs with MP3-capabilities have been coming out for some time now.
In tutorial, Geoff, you mentioned about the inconvenience of playing the mobility of MP3s, say if you want to play them in your car.
All those gadgets - a normal MP3 player like the ipod, the MP3-enabled mobile phone or PDA - can be put on your dashboard. Then take the speakers you use for your Mac and plug it in to the gadget. You then have your own hi-fi system in your car. And I'm sure manufacturers will soon create an MP3 gadget that can be plugged straight into the car audio system, and tap the car audio system's speakers.
There's no stopping development.
And much as a fangirl of the CD I am, I will now list the benefits of MP3s.
Let's talk about P2P or peer to peer file sharing first.
It started with the legendary Napster, now a shadow of its former self after being bought over and legalised. The fall of Napster alerted other P2P networks to the vulnerability of using a central sharing system. Post-Napster P2P networks avoided doing the same, choosing instead to allow users to share files directly with each other, not through a central system the network owns.
The advantages of free music are many. It's free! And if you believe music to be educational, P2P faciliates this education process.
You know how it is like when you want to "convert" a friend to listent to a certain musician? That friend's not likely to go buy the record just to check it out, he might even be too lazy to download it himself but somehow people are receptive to receiving files over the internet (You can send each other files via chat programmes like ICQ and MSN Messager too).
We don't all have the dough to buy every album we want to check out or the classics we feel we need for our own musical education. My Mp3 collection ranges from The Kingston Trio to Linkin Park. And after one POP MS lecture, I came home and downloaded songs from Little Richard.
The internet is also chockful of rare tracks, especially live bootleg tracks which are more often than not not available in your usual record store.
If the popularity of MP3s could be stemmed, it would have by now, after Napster's legal tussle, artistes like Metalica, Madonna and Eminem advocating against it, legal suits against young kids who downloaded Mp3s. The very resilience of P2P reflects the demand for the convenience of MP3s and that P2P is not going to be just a trend.
And by the way, did you know that P2P services are not illegal? What is illegal is the sharing of copyrighted material, when its author has not given permission for it to be shared.
That's why the new P2P networks - like Kazaa, Ares, BitTorrent - cannot be closed down easily.
Saturday, March 13, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 1557
You know that Nick Hornby book, High Fidelity, the one that was made into a movie? Well, I haven’t seen the movie but I did read the book and found many of the lead character’s observations and neurotic habits familiar.
Here’s my top 10 favourite bands, and I assure you I spent as much sweat and thought into this list as that male character did on his list of top 10 albums.
1 - U2
2 - The Beatles
3 - Nirvana
4. Umm, I don’t know really. After No. 3, it gets too hard trying to decide whether I like Radiohead, Red Hot Chili Peppers better or REM better (and what about Suede, Blur and Oasis, my Britpop years favourites?) and I get distracted by whether I should change the list name from top 10 favourite bands to top 10 favourite musicians. That way, I can add the solo artistes too.
Anyhow, I give up, though I have a sneaking suspicion that this list will haunt me for many many more hours.
But why was I trying to get the list together any way?
I’ve always fancied Brit bands better than American bands and I thought articulating my top 10 bands will give a good idea whether it’s American or Brit bands which occupy a bigger part of my heart.
Now, of course, most of the world won’t care whether I love American or British music more but more should care in a friendly discussion on American music versus British music: Which is better?
Did the reign of American music died with Elvis, like the poster a screaming American Beatles fan carried in the documentary shown in the lecture? (It basically said: Elvis’ dead. We love The Beatles).
Some, like the male babysitter in Jerry Maguire who gave Tom Cruise’s character a Miles Davis tape for Maguire and Renee Zellweger’s um, night in, would say that with Miles Davis’ career, American music’s greatest hour rose and ended.
Then, we have The Beatles, who in their heyday, was – in John Lennon’s words – “bigger than God” (Noel Gallagher from Oasis infamously and not quite accurately duplicated the same phrase on his own band during their own heyday).
It has been 40 years since The Beatles stormed America and introduced the UK brand of rock n roll and no one can argue that the Fab Four weren’t amazingly successful.
But since then, while bands like Radiohead and Coldplay have been well received in America, generally, America has not been embracing Brit bands.
At times, it seems that cracking Stateside is the highest test for British musicians.
UK’s pop king, bad boy of pop, Robbie Williams not too long ago tried – even recording a duet with Nicole Kidman, a cover of Something Stupid – but failed.
Bands like would-be punk group Busted, who is currently wildly popular in Britain (for reasons not understandable to me), are unknown in America.
A BBC article (Feb 2004) reported that “in 1986, British artists accounted for almost a third of all records sold in the US. Acts like Duran Duran, Wham! and Simple Minds were among those at the top of the US charts in the 1980s” but “now, just 5% of music bought in the US comes from artists signed in other countries”.
The answer to whether America or British music is better can only be articulated from a personal point of view. To try to find an objective answer to this is quite impossible and would involve colossal.
From Britain came the most important band in popular music, The Beatles, hailing from Liverpool. From Britain too came bands like The Clash, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Sex Pistols, all bands which shaped the history of rock (and punk) music.
A general music lover would identify Britain’s contribution to rock music as priceless.
And there were moments like Britpop, that phenomenon in the mid-90s which has faded away by now, which was full of good stuff, of bands like Oasis, Blur, Suede.
What did America contribute?
Top of mind comes R & B music and blues.
Manufactured pop idols are rampant in both countries and the UK charts’ top spots have known many dodgy singles from equally dodgy, not particularly talented bands like Deuce and Aqua.
Still, despite that, if by feeling and gut feel alone, I would say Brit music, UK music is my preferred choice.
If America seems like an adult, intent on being serious and contemporary, Britain – despite the fact that they are English – seems like a hotbed of creativity where new things erupt and occasionally explode. The Brit music scene actually seems like the impetuous, rock n roll kid who would continuously re-invent music.
Maybe it’s the rainy weather.
Maybe it’s the perpetual mist over so many parts of that isle.
That even The Spice Girls – out of whom only two out of five could sing decently – could reign in the charts in the late 90s, this is testimony to the kooky, kitsch part of British music industry’s soul.
But it’s from this very soul that more new things will come and continue to reinvent and inject new life into music.
That’s just my two-pence worth, any how.
Saturday, March 06, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 1200
“Music is more than an object of study: It is a way of perceiving the world.” – Jacques Attals (Noise: The Economy Of Music).
To agree with this statement, one has to first acknowledge that music is more than just a song. The economy and business of music have contributed to a pop culture with an identity and life force so strong that pop culture and a band (and consecutively the music it plays) are entwined.
Besides this involvement with pop culture, music in itself is more than words and melody.
Every song embodies different meaning, opinions and vibes. When you subscribe to a song, a genre and an artiste, you subscribe to a moment, a mentality, a certain way of perceiving the world.
This subscription could require different levels of commitment.
Let’s take Nirvana’s music to illustrate this commitment business.
You could listen to it as background music while you get ready for school, or even while you study. This requires a shallow level of commitment to the music.
Depending on factors like how big a Nirvana fan you are, your mood and emotional and psychological involvement with the music differs.
Heavy commitment to the music requires a different level of focus. The music could be just playing in the same scenarios, while you do mundane, every-day stuff but if you open yourself emotionally and mentally up to it, you then move with the music on a different plane.
Maybe it’s droning “hello, how low, how low, how low, how low” repeatedly with Kurt Cobain before screaming
“With the lights out it's less dangerous
Here we are now
Entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now
Entertain us” (Smells Like Teen Spirit),
taking his words as your own and feeling it, or just sitting somewhere letting the music sweep over you and letting yourself feel the angst and emotions of the song.
That’s the moment - The moment of subscription (see fourth paragraph) when music swallows you up in an organic experience.
When you are in the moment, the way your world is perceived and indeed, the way your world is during the song is defined by the music. Music is then a way of perceiving the world.
Assuming you are a big Nirvana fan, “the moment” could very easily be extended into the rest of your life. Music, for you, then doesn’t start and end with the song, it continues.
Even when the music is not physically playing, it could be playing in your head.
Or you could carry about its lyrics and vibe as you go about your life, perhaps adopting a more angst-ridden view of the world, perhaps developing an affinity for flannel shirts, dirty jeans and Converses.
The way you perceive your world is affected and defined – to what extent resting on how much you like your idols, and how susceptible you are to music’s (the song, the band, the pop culture of the band) influence in your life – by music.
A Nirvana fan is much likely to perceive the world with more angst than say, a Jessica Simpson fan.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In certain music revolutions, we see clearly how the music brings about a different lifestyle to many. Say rock n roll. When it erupted, it advocated a certain lifestyle and image. Rock n Roll was seen as a departure from the safe, wholesome image of the musical era it replaced and the young people felt liberated by this new music revolution.
Soundscapes (Vol. 6, April 2003), an online journal on media culture observed, “This music excited the young, who were quick to adopt it and with it the accompanying behavioral style elements, and shocked their parents, who perceived it as a form of protest against the existing social order.”
The way the teenagers (a social category that sprung up then) perceive life was different due to the advent of rock n roll.
Here, I like to introduce another way of how music can be a dominant factor of how one perceives the world.
When I was much much younger, I had a huge crush on a British boy-band, Take That (Skeletons falling out of closets now, yes. Hush now.) I must had been about 13 or 14, and Take That was the first band I was serious about (I do assure you that my music tastes have moved on many miles since) and for me then, a teenager in Singapore, the Manchester boy band opened up a new window of the world to me.
Because of my adoration for them, I read about Manchester. I bought British magazines like Smash Hits, TV Hits, Big!… etc to get more info about them. Watching videos and specials on them made me familiar with their accents, some cockney jokes and such colloquial stuff.
Somehow, in some strange way, nurturing and feeding this big crush mentally expanded my world geographically.
It’s like reading Enid Blyton and strangely feeling like England is familiar to you even though you never been there. Or falling into wonderful literature like The Chronicles Of Narnia and how the made-believe world feels more real as you read.
Take That became my first connection to Manchester. Through them, I perceived this state I never been to.
And in the style of uninhibited teenage boy band worship, Take That was close to being the center of my world and affected how I live (music I listen to, literature I read, hanging out with fellow fans). Music was definitely more than an object of study, it was a way of perceiving the world for that young me.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We have talked about how music shapes a fan’s perception of the world. Now, let’s look at it from the songwriter’s view.
It’s like photography. You look at the world through the lens of music, the photographs that develops are the songs, by which viewers/ listeners share in what you see.
The music you make is the manifestation of your perception of the world. An artiste’s soul is injected – or rightfully should be, what with all the manufactured acts around today - into her song and lyrics.
(This is one reason why fans feel like they know their idols, because the latter have bared their souls in their music).
For the musician, the music he or she makes can define the reality in which he or she lives in.
A musician who sings sappy love songs is portrayed differently in the media than say, Marilyn Manson.
Of course, when one is a musician (you don’t even really have to be a celebrity), people expect things from you. They expect you to be arty, non-conformist, to conform to whatever image you are supposed to have as accords your musical style and genre.
The music you make is a piece of you, a certain moment of your life or a certain principle or belief or experience. It reflects your reflections, your bias, your emotions, your perception.
Before 1991’s Achtung Baby, U2’s image was very much associated with their faith in Christianity. It wasn’t even interviews with the band that made people aware of Bono’s, The Edge and Larry’s (Clayton wasn’t a believer) faith.
It was the band’s music, songs like Pride (In The Name Of Love), 40 (Based on Psalm 40 from the Bible) and I Will Follow, which obviously reflected their faith, their perception of the world.
I feel like asking again: What is music? I won’t because I can’t answer it adequately but one thing it is, it’s more than a course of study.
And that’s why this journal’s so darn hard to do. Music is so personal, organic and infused with every thing, how do you do it as a course of study?!
Monday, March 01, 2004
Pop-M-S @ 1608.
The following are a couple of probably useless, definitely unscientific and very much random quizzes. Just for amusement to break up the monotony and maybe you like to try them too : ) heh
Garage rock! I like you... I like you alot! You
and indie are on the same plane for me! You
bring rock'n'roll down to its dirty roots,
whether being minimalist like The White Stripes
or retro like The Strokes. You keep on doing
what you're doing! Oh...and did I mention I
like you alot?
What genre of rock are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
The Strokes??!! Um, they are all right, man but I haven't even touched their CD tt I got two Christmas ago....
Which Rock Chick Are You?
Umm... um. Oh well.
All works on www.popms.blogspot.com copyrighted by Skye Tan.